Beyond Beatdowns

This popped up in my Facebook news feed.

I am taking the author at his word that it is okay to reproduce this in full. I think it adds a little more much-needed context to my previous post. I added some links but did not edit it.

* Everyone, please post this on the pages of your male Facebook friends, because I want as many men as possible to read this essay.

A Husband Shoots Wife on Brooklyn Street as a Community Watches

By Byron Hurt

On Tuesday, September 1, I spoke to more than 2000 incoming freshman students at Montclair State University in New Jersey. The Department of Student Development and Campus Life invited me to campus to show clips from my documentary film, Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, and address the issue of men's physical and sexual violence against women as part of their New Student orientation. In my speech, I spoke about the urgent need for men to act as proactive bystanders in the face of such violence.

As I spoke to the students about gender-based violence in north Jersey, in Brooklyn, NY, Lenox Ramsey, 25, taunted, chased, and then finally shot his wife, Kaidan Ramsey, 22, in broad daylight near Brooklyn's Medgar Evers College. Surveillance tapes show a terrified Kaidan running for her life as people on the street watched, doing nothing.

Our communities cannot remain silent and tolerate this kind of violence. We must speak up loudly and boldly when men physically or sexually assault women. We also need to ramp up efforts to educate boys and men about patriarchy, sexism, male privilege, and how men's violence against women is ultimately about men maintaining power and control over female bodies.

This has to stop. Men's violence against women is pervasive worldwide, and we can no longer deflect this issue onto women as if they are the cause of the problem and should fix it by themselves. Each day, new stories emerge about men who abduct, rape, beat, harass, and kill women. We do not need any more statistics or empirical data to prove or legitimize that men's violence against women is a real problem. It is real, and it happens each and every day, all over the world.

Men, we cannot be silent anymore. Non-abusive men who respect women and who disrespect men that abuse women have to speak up when incidents like this occur. You do not have to be an expert or know the latest statistics. All you have to do is care, have courage, be a leader, and speak up in defense of the women you love. (Read Jackson Katz' Ten Things Men Can Do to Prevent Gender Violence at www.jacksonkatz.com)

Through my filmmaking, writing, and community outreach, I will continue to do all that I can to ally with women and educate as many non-abusive men as humanly possible. By simply raising our voices, men and women can use our influence to collectively send the message to other men that the abuse of women is not cool and should not be respected within our communities.

If you have a mother, sister, daughter, grandmother, aunt, or female friend that you love and care about, then you should be an advocate for them and tune in to the issues that affect them daily.

••••••

Byron Hurt is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, a published writer, and an anti-sexist activist. Visit his website, www.bhurt.com.

Feel free to cut and paste my statement and forward widely along with the link to the article and disturbing video footage of the shooting. I also recommend that you google, buy, and read these five books to learn more about what we as men can do to help end violence against women:

• The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help, by Jackson Katz
• Men Speak Out: Views on Gender, Sex, and Power, edited by Shira Tarrant
• The Black Male Handbook: A Blueprint for Life
• NewBlackMan, by Mark Anthony Neal
• The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love, by bell hooks

On a somewhat related matter, what a disgraceful display that was the other night when Chris Brown appeared on CNN's Larry King Live. If you have the stomach for it, there's a satiric take here. Frankly, I think there's been enough joking about the subject.

UPPITY WOMAN DATE: Hurt's Facebook note has attracted many comments, including some on the problem of intervening when somebody has a gun -- and you don't.

Accordingly, he has rewritten part of his note. Here is an excerpt:

As a man, I know how easy it is look the other way and ignore male abusive behavior when it happens, especially when it happens publicly. I’ve been in situations like this and I know how paralyzing one can feel – not knowing exactly what to do. I have been in situations where I have failed to act and remember feeling horrible for lacking the courage to raise my voice. I have also been in situations when I have acted, and fellas, it’s not as difficult or scary as you might imagine.

I understand the fear people feel when faced with intervening when a man is abusing a woman on a busy street. We are afraid the abuser will turn his rage onto us. This fear is real and has to be acknowledged. But as a community, we cannot remain silent and tolerate this kind of violence. We must speak up loudly and boldly when men physically or sexually assault women. Honk your car horn, yell and shout, call 911, or try to somehow distract the abuser from attacking his victim - even if it is for an instant. But please, do not remain silent. Help the woman out. Please understand that I am not suggesting that you jump in front of a bullet to save someone’s life. You must be street smart and use wise judgment at all times. I am, however, suggesting that you do something as opposed to doing nothing at all. At the end of the day, we all have to look ourselves in the mirror knowing that we did the right thing when it mattered most to someone else.

Throw the book at them

THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED AND CORRECTED.

Understand, I am not one of those feminists who insist that merit be sacrificed on the altar of equality. However I do believe that (1) women start from behind and (2) the race is too often judged by boys' rules.

Which brings me to Newsweek's ''50 books for our times,'' What to Read Now. And Why.

Only eight by women. That is just 16 per cent deemed to have the ability to

open a window on the times we live in, whether they deal directly with the issues of today or simply help us see ourselves in new and surprising ways.

Top of the picks by women, coming in at No. 24? Mary Shelley's 19th century classic Frankenstein. (See update.)

Right behind it at No. 25, another female authored book, about motherhood. Then at No. 37, Marjane Satrapi's couldn't-get-more-current Persepolis.

No A Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood? This in an age when so many are trying to turn back the clock on women's rights, and force them to become breeders? What about her genetic-engineering-gone-mad Oryx and Crake?

Nothing by Barbara Tuchman? Erna Paris? What about Barbara Margaret MacMillan's Paris 1919, the book which lays out how the western powers messed up the Middle East?

As my Tweep @ShelbyKnox points out, what times do Newsweek's editors live in?

OOPSY DAISY DATE: My friend Skdadl from over at POGGE points out that I missed Flannery O'Connor's short story collection A Good Man is Hard to Find at No. 12.

Licence to thrill

The only reason I found this remotely interesting is that I was a rabid James Bond fan in my teens, having read all the Ian Fleming novels between the time Dr. No hit the theatres and Goldfinger debuted.

It's an almost scholarly examination of 007's sexual encounters and politics, complete with footnotes and graphs.

Here are some of the conclusions:

Of the 12 Women who have an affair with Bond, one commits suicide (Vesper) and three are murdered: Tatiana, Jill and Tracy.

As for the remaining 8 Bond Women:

Solitaire intends spending two weeks with Bond before they part. Cork writes:

The novel ends with Bond and Solitaire anticipating a libidinous fortnight together after their adventure. Neither appears to hold any illusions about a future beyond. Neither carries any guilt or any emotional burden as a consequence of their actions. (107)

Tiffany Case and Bond spend several happy months together in London. The reason for Tiffany deciding to leave Bond is revealed by 007 to M. in From Russia, With Love: (108)

“Well, sir, we did get on well. And there was some idea we might get married. But then she met some chap in the American Embassy. On the Military Attaché’s staff. Marine Corps major. And I gather she is going to marry him. They’ve both gone back to the States, as a matter of fact. Probably better that way. Mixed marriages aren’t often a success.” (109)

It is surprising, then, that Bennett and Woollacott should write:

Constructed according to the formula ‘equal but yet subordinate’, her destiny is not to be a housewife - in Diamonds are Forever [actually, From Russia, With Love], Tiffany case flirts with this possibility, only to reject it - but a free and equal partner, neither dependent on Bond nor encumbering him with duties and responsibilities, but who none the less, when it comes to the crunch (in bed) knows her place. (110)

Clearly Tiffany’s destiny is to be a housewife. First she wants to marry Bond, and then she gets engaged to a Marine Corps major.

As for poor old Bond, he has failed in the marriage stakes yet again. He was engaged to Vesper but she died. He married Tracy and she died. He loved Gala but she married another. Tiffany does the same.

Meanwhile, Kissy Suzuki happily adopts the role of housewife to Bond as she brings him back to life.

All of this sounds like Bond is the kind of fellow who falls in love with Women who want to get married.

Of the unmarried Women (as far as we know; they may all have grandchildren by now), one is Honeychile Rider. How does Bond leave her? Infuriatingly, this is never revealed. It is risky to presume, but it is possible that Bond left her in Jamaica when he returned to London post-mission. If this is the case, she would be the first Bond Woman to be abandoned in the line of duty.

My conclusion: It's best to have been Moneypenny, the only Bond girl who survived multiple Bond encounters.

Anyway, after Sean Connery was no longer Bond, I lost interest.

Probably explains why I am still alive.

It's Friday. Give me a break.

The Fundamental Value of a Good Book

Earlier this week, The Star's Kristin Rushowy reported that the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) was reviewing the inclusion of Margaret Atwood's multi-award-winning dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale on its Grade 12 reading list. That's because, as she wrote in a follow-up today, one parent complained:

Robert Edwards says if students repeated some of the words from Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale in the school halls, they'd be suspended, so he questions why it is okay in the classroom.

And what about the foul language, the anti-Christian overtones, the violence and sexual degradation, asks the parent who launched a formal complaint about the Canadian novel. Don't they violate the Toronto board's policies of respect and tolerance?

<SNIP>

Edwards filed a formal compliant with the Toronto District School Board before the Christmas holidays, arguing that while the futuristic theme of the book is acceptable, its focus on "sex, brutal situations, murder, prostitution" is not.

The book "is rife with brutality towards and mistreatment of women (and men at times), sexual scenes, and bleak depression," Edwards said in a letter to the school's principal. "I can't really understand what it is my son is supposed to be learning from this fictional drivel.

"I have a major problem with a curriculum book that cannot be fully read out loud in class, in front of an assembly, directly to a teacher, a parent, or, for that matter, contains attitudes and words that cannot be used by students in class discussion or hallway conversation. Let alone a description of situations that must be embarrassing and uncomfortable to any young woman in that class – and probably the young men, too."

<SNIP>

After Edwards complained, his son was assigned another book, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, and will step out of class during any discussions on The Handmaid's Tale.

Way to make your kid feel like a weirdo. But that's a parent's right, I suppose.

Nothing wrong with Huxley, whose Brave New World is still relevant. But in this world, The Handmaid's Tale, so successful it's been both a movie and an opera, is practically prognostication, and it relates to not only what is happening in some quarters of Western society but also all over the less developed and even parts of the Muslim world where women are nothing more than chattel and breeders.

Which leads to today's treeware column, reprinted here in full, with some links for readers who want more details:

The wonder is that Margaret Atwood's multi-award- winning 1985 novel The Handmaid's Tale ever made it on any public school reading lists.

Not because of its sexual content, which is as titillating as test tube fertilization. But because of its lacerating look at the let's-get-back-to-that-old-timey-religion and way-of-life-when-father-knew-best-and-women-sat-in-the- corner-doing-needlework fundamentalist undercurrent running, still, in society.

It isn't slipping beneath the radar, as we saw during Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's mercifully brief run at the high priestess-ship of this cult, er, culture.

The question is, is it growing or is it just getting better organized, thanks, or not thanks, to the Internet?

The Handmaid's Tale, which has been challenged in school districts from Washington to Florida, Texas to Pennsylvania, and now, as the Star reported this week, in Toronto, is a deeply depressing and disturbing mystery set in an environmentally devastated future where, like P.D. James' 1992 Children of Men, mass infertility and fascism reign.

The difference is that, in Atwood's version, most women, rather than all men, have been rendered sterile, and those that can still reproduce are drafted as baby incubators/reproduction slaves to the ruling elite.

And, hah, they are covered in robes not unlike burkas.

There's a lot of religious and ritualistic mumbo-jumbo thrown in, not to mention the sort of sexual hypocrisy we see in clandestine Jerusalem strip clubs frequented by ultra-Orthodox Jews, in Muslim clerics seen cavorting with their mistresses on the Internet in Iran and in Bible-thumping U.S. senators and televangelists pursuing underage boys.

It's a great book and, like George Orwell's Animal Farm, required reading for my Cold War generation, and Aldous Huxley's timeless Brave New World, is exactly the kind of literature needed to stimulate thoughtful discussion amongst adolescents who might not otherwise debate much more than who should win American Idol.

Especially in times like these.

For despite the inauguration of hope and change next week on Washington's Pennsylvania Ave., the social tectonic plates have far from settled where women may rest assured that their human rights supersede those of zygotes.

Consider: U.S. President-elect Barack Obama has chosen pro-forced pregnancy pastor Rick Warren to preside. This is a very influential religious leader who has compared the number of abortions since the Roe-vs.-Wade decision in the United States, to the Holocaust.

Meanwhile, at the Liaison Capitol Hill hotel a few blocks away, the American Life League will be gearing up for its "Personhood Conference," which is all about giving a half-dozen cells of human tissue supremacy over the woman in whose body they were created.

Oh but that's not all. The so-called "patriarchy movement'' is gaining momentum, with thousands signing on to ancient Christian ideas of women's submission and cloistering.

Not in Canada you say?

Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper can barely keep the lid on his forward-to-the-past party in which members demand legislation to protect "the unborn child'' and MPs head up the anonymous "pro-life caucus.''

His previous minority government silenced women's rights advocacy groups while "think tanks'' such as the Ottawa-based Institute of Marriage and Family Canada enjoy access to Parliament Hill and to newspaper opinion pages to pitch an anti-choice, anti-national-child-care, anti-gay-rights and anti-divorce agenda.

This while the Vatican blames women on the Pill who use the toilet, as it said this month, for the decrease in male fertility all over the world, which scientists have attributed, among other things, to the dumping of chemicals in the environment and the growth hormones used in the meat industry.

So is it any wonder that some people find The Handmaid's Tale – which is also about censorship – too threatening to have on Grade 12 reading lists?

God knows, it might give kids the ability to look critically at what's happening out there.

It's worth going to the Star's website for Kristin and my originals because there's a heck of a huge debate raging in the comments, especially on Kristin's story.

One note regarding the sexual content: It's straight out of the Bible, as in Rachel, Leah and Jacob.

When Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, she envied her sister; and she said to Jacob, Give me children or I shall die! […] Then she said, Here is my maid Bilhah; go in to her, that she may bear upon my knees, and even I may have children through her.

In fact, a whole lot of the novel is based on the Bible.

Figures.

The Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood, as interviewed by The New York Times last week:

In 1985, you published “The Handmaid’s Tale,” a much-discussed classic set in a future in which the U.S. government has come to be controlled by right-wing fundamentalists. Do you feel you anticipated the likes of Sarah Palin? Ha. You can order action figures of her now.

'Dying Amazon' by Franz von Stuck, 1905

Do you own any? No, I am afraid of what the actions would be. Read the book by Antonia Fraser called “The Warrior Queens .” You will see that no woman ruler has been successful if she has been an advocate for women at large. Not one, ever. It’s the Thatcher model, which is, “All women should stay home and take care of their babies except me.”

On the other hand, Palin is tapping into Madonna iconography by appearing in public with her infant. The Virgin Mary was known for being modest and demure. She is not a gun-toting mama. I’m sorry.

Can't top that snark.

Power grab

New York writer Susan Squire needed 13 years of research to complete I Don't: A Contrarian History of Marriage, her wicked and scholarly look at how, ever since men figured out that penetration leads to procreation, reproduction has been all about them. It's their ''seed'' that gets the starring role in the Bible, their penises which get statues in ancient Greece and Rome.

I wish I could convey to you how much I learned, not about women so much but about men, and their fears of and vulnerability to women.

That's because, as Squire points out, the history of male-female relations has been documented by men, not women. Any female experience has been filtered through male perceptions of that experience. Which reveals more than you can imagine.

But first, a story:

The other day I was sitting on the patio reading the book when the man I was sitting with wanted to know how I would improve the world. Long story short, we ended up on the hypothetical scenario, strictly for argument's sake, on what would happen if all men suddenly disappeared from the planet. My gentleman friend suggested that women would get into one gigantic catfight.

"Over what?'' I asked.

Women, I posited, have been hardwired to seek out men and hold on to them for survival's sake. Once upon a time we wanted the brawniest guy in the cave so that we'd have lots of woolly mammoth to feed our offspring and also because he could fend off predators and the pillagers from the next cave. Today, brawn is more about bank account. But you get the picture.

If women no longer need to compete for men, what would they fight over? Shoes? Ha. You wanna bet we'd all be in comfy flats?

My friend really couldn't answer because he has little clue, just like many men, of what drives women on a primal level, aside from the urge to couple up and nest. That has been his experience of women. And it is that kind of experience that has affected male-female relations through the years while ending up in the historical and religious narrative.

But, here's the thing: Men always have wanted to control their image, usually among men. So they came up with so-called manly notions about power and potency.

Well, as any married man can tell you, the little woman pretty much knows all your weaknesses. Hence, she can expose you.

Which explains, according to Squire anyway, why men have struggled to constrain, contain and confine women through the centuries. They didn't want women giving them up.

I loved I Don't because it contextualizes so much, from the concept of original sin to chastity belts to honour killings.

Monday, she and I talked for two hours on the phone. I wish I could share that entire exchange but it would take too long to type up. Here are some excerpts from an edited version The Star ran today:

Q: You say it wasn't misogyny, but gynophobia, fear of women, that led to all this regulation of wives, marriage and lust. What were men so afraid of?

A: In everything they've written over all these thousands of years, men are pretty consistent about what they want and fear. It all comes down to wanting, in general, peace of mind from a wife. That includes trusting her, being sure she wasn't going to be unfaithful, that she would support him, that she wouldn't embarrass him or expose him as a weak human being, that he was not in charge.

I think marriage put men in the most vulnerable position of all because they couldn't help being exposed to the woman they lived with and shared a bed with.

Q: Why didn't women rebel?

A: Who knows if women felt oppressed? The condition of society at the time was hierarchical. The king answered to the pope, the pope answered to God.

But women had a lot of power without having any authority. The power came from being able to affect how men were perceived as men within society.

When you place yourself at the top you have a lot to lose. A man's identity was pretty much formed in social opinion by the behaviour of the woman he was supposedly in control of. So if a wife addressed him too familiarly in public, or wore too much makeup, or drank too much, let alone slept around, a man was emasculated.

Men dug their own hole here.

<SNIP>

Q: Has much changed today?

A: Men still are very needy and very fragile. The fragility of the penis, one way or the other, seems to be at the root of everything. And I don't want to knock men. I feel sorry for them.

It has always been about what women could show or reveal about men. Over and over again, all these attempts, all the laws, all the double standards, all put in place by religious life or secular life, were to neutralize women, to keep them from showing that men were not men. The solution is for men to not have to be constantly hard, because they aren't. But we're still not there.

One of the many things that didn't get into the paper was Squire's chagrin that all the (mostly positive) reviews she got and interviews she has done since the book was published were by women.

As if marriage or male-female relations is strictly a woman's issue.

But it isn't, of course.

As she told me,

I feel the book is about the male psyche, as revealed by men. If I were a man I would want to know about that.

Funny because, today, a loyal male reader wrote to me to ask why I am always writing about stuff from ''a woman's point of view.'' He's not sexist. He just doesn't get it.

When women write about men, it's our ''point of view.''

When men write about women (or men or anything), it's not ''the male point of view'' but media coverage, history and religious doctrine.

MEOW: Speaking of catfights, I had a little column about that too today. It's been bugging me how the anointing of Alaska governor Sarah Pailin has resulted women going against women, as I noted last week.

We have the likes of Barbara Amiel, U.S. social critic Camille Paglia and the National Post's Barbara Kay penning anti-feminist screeds, cherry-picking quotes or taking them out of context, to spout such kitty litter as how "Palin proved you don't need the sisterhood to pierce the glass ceiling."

Oh, really?

As author and former New York Times op-ed columnist Anna Quindlen writes in the current Newsweek, "If (Palin) had been born 30 years earlier, the PTA would likely have been her last stop, not her first. Her political ascendancy is a direct result of the women's movement, which has changed the world utterly for women of all persuasions."

Even the fact we have so many women columnists going at each other would not have happened back in 1984, when Palin was strutting about in the swimsuit competition as Miss Wasilla.

But now, feminist women have a voice, and they're using it to roar.

And so, unable to put women back "in their place," the Bible-thumping, Original Sin-expounding, submit-to-your-husband, anti-choice, anti-equal rights crowd has figured out how to silence the beast.

They have set the Palin pigeon among the cats, and laugh while the fur flies.

There's no need for a backlash when we're busy stabbing each other in the back.

    

    

F-Bombs

Regular readers here know that I am a tremendous fan of Feministing, which has been on my blogroll since Broadsides was launched. Founded by Jessica Valenti, it's one of my top go-to sites for the snarkiest in feminist news and views. I would link to it more often but for the fact that ''feminist'' is not the only f-word it uses and The Star, a family paper, frowns on that sort of thing.

(BTW: On Monday, I was REALLY dying to post a YouTube video of an HBO special starring the late George Carlin ranting about how pro-lifers are anti-woman, but the late, great comedian dropped so many four-letter words that it was out of the question. I did put it on my Facebook page. If you want to see it, Google is your friend.)

Anyway, the prolific, talented and eggsy Valenti is in town tonight to promote her latest book, He's a Stud, She's a Slut, and 49 Other Double Standards Every Woman Should Know, and to join in a panel discussion with ''with local feminist superheroes Jessica Yee, Sarah Wolf, and Laurel Mitchell.'' It's all sponsored by the shameless Shameless magazine and in support of the Miss G_ Project for Equity in Education, ''a grassroots young feminist organization working to combat all forms of oppression in and through education, including sexism, homophobia, racism and classism.''

For more info on the event, click here if you're on Facebook. Or go here.

Here's a snip from my column about Valenti, printed in the paper today.

He's the boss, she's a bitch. He's independent, she's pathetic. He's childless, she's selfish. He's a Romeo, she's a stalker. He's angry, she's PMSing.

These are just some of the gender inequities in Jessica Valenti's new book, He's a Stud, She's a Slut and 49 Other Double Standards Every Woman Should Know.

Pay close attention to how men and women are commonly characterized – come on down, Hillary Clinton! – and you can't miss the so-ingrained-most-can't-even-hear-them-any-more slurs against women.

"After I wrote my first book (Full Frontal Feminism), I got a lot of amazing responses," says Valenti, 29, on the phone from her home in Queens, New York, where she lives, writes and edits the popular blog she founded four years ago, feministing.com.

"I saw what resonated most with women of all ages, the everyday inequities, the everyday slights that really affected them, that made them understand why feminism is so important, that make women go `Wow, that is sexism!'"

All these gung-ho third-wave feminists gladden the heart of an old second-waver like moi.

That's because, rather than run from the f-word while benefiting from the hard-won battles for equal rights, these women embrace it.

"I call it `I'm-not-a-feminist-but' syndrome," explains Valenti. "It's like `I'm not a feminist but I think it's terrible that we don't have equal pay yet. I'm not a feminist but I think that women should have access to birth control without having problems at their pharmacies.'

"The conservative movement and the backlash against feminism have been extremely successful and smart in labelling feminism with all these ridiculous stereotypes that really serve a specific and strategic purpose. If young women believe that feminism is for man-haters, is uncool, is ugly, then why would they ever want to identify with it?"

Why indeed?

When I was Valenti's age, feminists were labelled bra-burning, hairy-legged beasts that could never catch a husband.

Some things never change.

"They have been pushing the same nonsense for so many years and we continue to fall for them," she agrees. "I tell readers they're trying to pull one over on you. They're hoping that you're going to fall for it."

Really, it's been --what? -- some 40 years since the second wave really took off in the late 60s and "they'' are still trying to keep women down.

Who are "they?'' Everybody from Republican presidential contender John McCain who has flip-flopped his position on women's reproductive rights to Canada's Conservatives who are trying to pass Bill C-484 which opens the door to our losing the right to choose here. ''They'' are the misogynist commentators who got away with sexist slurs on Hillary Clinton. ''They'' are the people who blame ''femi-nazis'' for the divorce rate, the pregnancy rate among teenagers (hello? take away access to contraception and what do you think will happen?), the crime rate and the declining birth rate. "They'' are the Church(es) who refuse to recognize what Jesus did, that women are equal to men. ''They'' are the right (religious or otherwise), the Islamists, the many patriarchal cultures, societies, religions and institutions threatened by women who are strong, independent, mobile, not chained to the bed, the nursery and the stove.

''They'' are also the corporations that rake in billions by making women feel fat, ugly and old, so that they spend their 70 cents on the male wage dollar on clothes and cosmetics they don't need so that they don't merely looked groomed or stylish, but so that they feel human.

As Valenti discussed, all those tanning parlours and nail salons sprouting up in your neighbourhood are just the latest manifestation of that.

So good on Valenti and her Feministing sisters who blog for fun but not for profit.

Long may they bitch.

 

Vive la difference

I've received fascinating letters in response to today's treeware column, about what would happen if men lived without women, and women without men. Triggered by CBC-TV's reality show The Week the Women Went, it was a reflection on the speculative situation set up by Philip Wylie (Generation of Vipers), whose work is credited with inspiring both the Superman and Spider-Man characters.

Imagine a world suddenly – very suddenly – without men.

Planes would drop out of the sky as pilots disappeared. Cities would grow cold and dark as power generators stopped. No fire trucks would come to deal with the inevitable disasters. Legislatures would empty. Wars would end.

Now imagine the flip side.

Babies would fall out of vanished mother's arms. Things would get dirty and dusty. Men would eat out of cans. Liquor stores and bars would be booming. Drag queens would always have dates.

In the short term, women would suffer.

But, in the long run, men would turn on each other.

These were the parallel worlds that Philip Wylie described in his 1951 what-if book, The Disappearance. For protagonist Bill Gaunt, a university professor, in one instant his educated stay-at-home wife Paula vanishes, along with their daughter, granddaughter and housemaid.

He scarcely notices, at first.

For Paula, after Bill vanishes, the effect is immediate. A driverless car smashes into the front of the house – and nobody comes to help.

Two years later, the women's world is under control whereas the men's, despite its distinct physical advantage, descends into deadly conflict and chaos.

The book is long, wordy, perhaps over-written. But to me, back in 1974 or 1975 when I found it at the St. Clair branch of the Toronto Public Library, utterly compelling, especially as my feminism was being formed.

(Lots of excerpts here.)

At the time, I was sharing digs with two guys, one of whom would become my first husband. I so raved about the book that they ended up reading it as well.

They were not impressed, not at all.

At the time, I felt stupid -- a lightweight -- for liking a book so much that they found florid and ridiculous. Now I know better. Much better.

Since then, I have read many great books, most of them forgotten. But I have will ALWAYS remember The Disappearance, although I have not re-read it in or even seen it in some 34 years.

Seems I am not alone. So far today, I have received more than two dozen emails from women who remember the book very well. I have invited them to read this blog entry and post a comment if they like.

I don't know for sure if what Wylie described would come to pass, whether a world without men would be better than one without women. They certainly would be very different places, that's for sure.

Men would be more competitive, more driven to win, I think. Women would get organized. I base this on our essential make-ups, rooted way back in prehistory when women had to co-operate back the home cave to stay safe and raise babies while men were out hunting or fighting off enemies. It's true you have to be organized to do that but in a more hierarchical, almost pack way.

That's my half-baked socio-anthropological theory anyway, and I'm sticking to it.

That said,  I totally get what one mail reader wrote to me in an email today:

While I agree that it is a woman’s influence that keeps some men “in line”, it is also true that some women would be lost without the support and peace of mind of being with “their man”.

That is no doubt true for many women (and vice versa). But women, I think, are far more adept at finding nurturing and support from other women and are more likely to survive being on their own than a man with no comparable network.

I know that, as a woman on my own, I can pick up the phone and talk to any number of friends, (female) cousins and sisters about what really really matters. If I need help, they are there with advice, a sympathetic ear, a hug, a shoulder to cry on.

Do men do the same for each other? I am not so sure. Otherwise, why would so many men tell me that they prefer talking to women than men?

As for women on their own coping with wet basements and cars that won't start, well, it's nice to have a guy around to take care of that stuff but we girls ain't stupid. We can cope if we decide we can. I know that from personal experience.

That said, it's nice to have a man around to hold you, love you and make you feel protected. I have to admit that it's even better if he can replace your dimmer switch, swap out your old laundry room sink and taps and shovel your snow.

I am lucky that I have the best of both worlds, one filled with many wonderful women (and male friends, for that matter) and one private one with a special man.